GEORGE ROBERTSON

P.I.E

Gordon Brown was duped into backing an event where a paedophile group secretly planned to launch its vile campaign, it emerged last night.

Mr Brown and former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook were among several key figures on the intellectual Left who sponsored a conference, unaware the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE) was seeking to piggy-back its way into a legitimate movement.

Both men believed they were simply supporting a gay rights congress and, on that basis, agreed to lend their names to it.

But The Mail on Sunday can reveal that it was organised by the founder of PIE, the sinister 1970s lobby group dedicated to legalising sex with children.

Publicly available documents show:

PIE planned to use the congress to push its own disturbing agenda.

Paedophiles from all over the world were secretly invited and assured the event would take ‘paedophilia in its stride’.

PIE was mentioned in a congress programme as a ‘new Scottish-based group of paedophiles’.

Delegates were invited to attend a planned ‘workshop’ on paedophilia.

PIE would later use similar tactics to infiltrate the National Council for Civil Liberties (NCCL) when it moved its powerbase to London a few years later.

Earlier this year, shocking links were exposed between PIE and Labour grandees Harriet Harman, Jack Dromey and Patricia Hewitt, who all held key roles in the NCCL.

Ms Harman belatedly expressed ‘regret’ that the group – which police suspect of abusing children on an ‘industrial scale’ – was allowed to forge links with the council. However, she refused to apologise.

The International Gay Rights Congress was held over four days in Edinburgh in December 1974 and organised by Ian Dunn, who had set up PIE a few months earlier.At the time, Gordon Brown was rector of Edinburgh University, representing students to the senior management, and was already identified as a future Labour star. In addition to Mr Brown and Mr Cook, Dunn also secured support for the congress from David Steel, the future leader of the Liberal Party.

All three knew Dunn as founder of the Scottish Minorities Group and a prominent spokesman for the gay community in Scotland. There is nothing whatsoever to suggest they knew about PIE’s existence at this time, or were aware it planned to use the congress as a launchpad.

They had been invited as ‘prominent Scotsmen’ and told only that the conference – the first of its kind – would examine ‘social and political situations affecting homosexuals’ across the world. But had they seen a programme, which it is understood was sent to delegates ahead of the congress, they might have noticed a reference to PIE under the heading ‘Projected workshops & small discussion groups’.

One was called Sexual Minorities and lists ‘Pedophilics, transsexuals, cross-dressers, s/m aficionados, asexuals’. Next to this listing in the ‘individuals participating’ column it says: ‘Pie, a new Scottish-based group of pedophiles, will be represented.’

Last night, Mr Brown’s office said he was unaware of PIE’s presence at the congress. Asked if he attended the congress, she said: ‘Not according to any records that Mr Brown has.’

How the Mail on Sunday reported, last year, on the Paedophile Information Exchange’s government funding

Dunn wrote to the future Prime Minister, then aged 23, in July 1974 and briefly outlined plans for the conference, saying he would be ‘honoured’ if he would be ‘associated with our effort’.

He added: ‘The limit of your “sponsorship” would be your willingness to allow your name to appear with your co-sponsors at the foot of our letterhead, hence the reason for our writing to a small number of people in the fields of politics and education. We await your reply with anticipation.’

Both Mr Brown and Mr Cook agreed and, along with other sponsors, co-signed a letter three months later recording their ‘support for the ideals of the congress as expressed by the organisers’. They urged Edinburgh councillors to grant the delegates a civic reception ‘in the accustomed manner normally accorded to important national conferences held in Edinburgh’.

However, at least one Scottish politician declined to be an ‘honorary sponsor’. Sir Malcolm Rifkind, then a Conservative MP in Edinburgh, raised concerns in his reply to Dunn in August 1974.

Although he had no inkling at the time that PIE intended to use the congress to advance its agenda, he wrote:

‘I cannot help but believe that the type of congress which you envisage, with all the attendant publicity, will be likely to encourage the growth of homosexual activity among the very young… While I have no desire to prevent adult members of the community indulging in such sexual activity as meets their requirements, I feel the objectives of your congress go far beyond that…’

Last night, Sir Malcolm, who was Foreign Secretary under John Major, told The Mail on Sunday: ‘Mr Dunn’s attempt to encourage MPs and other people to associate with this congress were clearly mischievous if that congress had a wider purpose which he was not revealing.’

The event was lauded as the first post-war conference of homosexual emancipation movements from around the world. But its link to PIE has never been revealed until today.

Experts said the event was one of many examples of how PIE leaders managed to infiltrate groups who were not aware of their true aims and dupe innocent people.

Author and jounalist Christian Wolmar – who later helped end PIE’s use of a legal charity’s address – said: ‘Their whole strategy was to make themselves respectable through linking themselves with prominent organisations and people. These people would not have known what PIE were advocating.’

Details of PIE’s involvement emerge from documents held at the National Archives of Scotland.

Michael Hanson, who was on the congress organising committee, made plain PIE’s primary aim in the SMG’s newsletter published in September 1974. It was, he wrote, to ‘campaign for the legal and social acceptance of paedophilic love’, adding: ‘I hope most [SMG] members will accept that we wish to recognise the value of PIE…’

In a letter to a friend on September 10 that year, Hanson, who admitted being attracted to boys as young as 13 but denied being a paedophile, wrote:

‘The Congress is taking paedophilia and other sexual minorities in its stride and invitations have been sent out to paedophile groups in Switzerland, the Netherlands, West Germany and the USA. ...There will be opportunities for individuals to set up workshops on anything not covered by the conference agenda, and it has already been decided to hold one on paedophilia… It will be good for paedophiles to understand general gay problems and for gays to be reminded about the minority in their midst.’ Hanson, who was PIE’s first chairman, added: ‘Paedophila/pederasty as such is not a subject which will be discussed by a full session of the Congress, but paedophiles will undoubtedly be interested in the sessions on Law and Rights of Young Homosexuals and, we hope, have a general interest in the other subjects under discussion.’

While it is impossible to imagine a paedophile group gaining a toehold at such an event today, back in the early 1970s an all-embracing ‘anything goes’ spirit prevailed.

At the time, homosexuality was still illegal in Scotland, though not in England and Wales, and much of the congress was taken up with discussion of changing the law. Other subjects included ‘homosexuals in politics, public education on homosexuality and the fight against persecution’.

In another letter, Hanson wrote about plans for a PIE newsletter that would have ‘the important role of… putting paedophiles in touch with each other’.

He also said the publication could include information about the ‘legal situation in various countries, books to read, the best part of certain towns for meeting boys’. The group, he added, would need a leader but initially ruled himself out, saying that he did not have ‘practical experience and knowledge ready to answer many of the queries that would turn up. (eg where in London can I meet boys? What do I do when the parents find out?)’ While Hanson helped organise the congress, most of the credit for its success went to Dunn.

An egocentric individual, he worked as a town planner in Edinburgh and was a trade union official and Labour Party activist. At one stage he was a Labour council candidate and, before his death in 1998, had applied to become a candidate for the Scottish Parliament.

For most of his life he denied he was a paedophile, claiming he had become involved in PIE because he believed in supporting minorities. Yet he allowed his flat to be used as the mailbox for a journal called Minor Problems, which billed itself as ‘a radical review for free intergenerational and child sexuality’.

When this was exposed, Dunn threatened to sue, but quietly dropped the legal action after a tape emerged of his boasting about having sex with a 14-year-old boy.

At his funeral, one young man turned up and said bitterly: ‘I just came to make sure he was dead.’ Explaining his anger, he said that he had been raped by Dunn when he was 15.

Derek Ogg, now a prominent Scottish QC, was the chairman of the congress and a leading figure in the SMG. In June 1975, he wrote to members urging them

‘positively to recognise the value of PIE and PAL [Paedophile Action for Liberation]’. He wrote: ‘The proposed policy to PIE and PAL states, “As paedophilia is not a homosexual condition but an all-sexual condition, SMG has no official connection with either of these organisations. We recognise them, however, as organisations seeking in difficult circumstances to further the knowledge and understanding of the paedophile sexual condition, and recognise their value as such.’

Earlier this year, shocking links were exposed between PIE and Labour Deputy Leader Harriet Harman (R), minister Jack Dromey and former health secretary Patricia Hewitt (L), who all held key roles in the NCCL

Mr Ogg went on to head Scotland’s National Sex Crimes Unit. Last night, he told The Mail on Sunday:

‘I have never, even as a naive teenage student, expressed support for the child sex agenda touted by PIE or any other group or individual.’ He also denied PIE was launched at the congress. ‘There was certainly no PIE workshop. I do not even know if such a workshop for minorities, whether advertised or not, actually took place. I did not attend any paedophile workshop.’

Of his comments on SMG’s policy towards paedophilia, he said: ‘This may (in the knowledge of what PIE became in following years) seem a naive statement now, I leave that to your readers. It achieved what I wanted, no affiliation of the group to ours and protection of young homosexuals within SMG itself. It also reconciled with my “private morality”, and that of many others, that child sex was plain wrong.’

Lord Steel said: ‘I think at the time I was one of the three party sponsors of the campaign in Scotland to decriminalise homosexuality, which could be why I would be listed as a sponsor of the congress, but I had no other knowledge of the event.’

Mr Brown’s office said he had no relationship with Ian Dunn or Michael Hanson and that he was unaware of their sympathetic views towards paedophiles.dailymail

ROBIN COOK, the former foreign secretary, was an early political ally of one of the founders of an organisation that campaigned for the legalisation of sex between adults and children, according to newly discovered documents.Cook, who died in 2005, was an honorary vice-president of the Scottish Minorities Group (SMG), Scotland’s first gay rights organisation, set up by gay activist Ian Dunn, the papers at the National Records of Scotland reveal.

Dunn used the first International Gay Rights Congress (IGRC), organised by the SMG in Edinburgh in 1974, as a front for summoning paedophiles from around the world to attend the event. This led to the establishment of the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE), which campaigned to abolish the age of consent. Claims that members of the organisation, which was officially disbanded in 1984, abused children on an “industrial scale” across the UK are being investigated by policeREAD IN FULL

One of 30 archive films on website telling history of gay rights movement

Portrays Dunn as a legitimate gay rights activist and makes no reference to his role in setting up the reviled Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE)

BBC say film is ‘significant’ and refused to remove it from their website

Campaigners say decision is ‘horrifying’ and shows contempt for victims

The documentary is presented by Ian Dunn one of the founders of the reviled Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE)

BBC bosses have sparked outrage by broadcasting a historic film presented by a notorious child sex campaigner – and have refused requests to remove it from the internet.

The documentary is presented by Ian Dunn, one of the founders of the Paedophile Information Exchange (PIE), which campaigned to legalise sex with children.

It is one of 30 archive films on the BBC’s website telling the history of the gay rights movement.

The 30-minute documentary – Glad To Be Gay? – portrays Dunn as a legitimate gay rights activist and makes no reference to his role in setting up the reviled group.

Victims of child abuse described as ‘horrifying’ the decision to upload the film.

When The Mail on Sunday contacted the BBC to point out the documentary was causing offence, the broadcaster refused to take it down – on the grounds that it is a ‘significant’ work on the history of gay rights.

The documentary, first shown on the BBC in 1976, shows the lives of gay people at a time when homosexuality was still illegal in Scotland, and featured interviews with future Foreign Secretaries Robin Cook and Malcolm Rifkind.

It was an episode of a public access TV series called Open Door, and the BBC website states it was made by the Scottish Minorities Group and credits Ian Dunn as a presenter.

Dunn, who died in 1998, is shown describing the work of the group in Edinburgh, while Mr Cook and Mr Rifkind were interviewed about their opinions on gay rights.

The footage includes Dunn calling for the age of consent to be lowered, stating: ‘We think a boy considered old enough to take responsibility of bringing up a family is surely old enough to make up his own mind.’ But there is no mention in either the original documentary or on the BBC website of Dunn’s role in campaigning for adults to be allowed to have sex with children.

When MoS contacted the BBC to point out the documentary was causing offence, the broadcaster refused to take it down – on the grounds that it is a ‘significant’ work on the history of gay rights

In October 1974, Dunn had co-founded PIE as an offshoot of SMG, and wrote that its goals were to campaign ‘for the legal and social acceptance of paedophilic love’.

Last night representatives of victims of child abuse said the BBC’s decision was at odds with refusing to show repeats of Top Of The Pops featuring disgraced DJs Jimmy Savile and Dave Lee Travis.

Catherine Allen, of sexual abuse victims’ charity One In Four, said: ‘This is horrifying and shows complete contempt for those who suffered at the hands of Ian Dunn and other members of PIE. I believed the BBC had learned lessons from the Savile saga but they still aren’t taking sexual abuse seriously.’

Dr Jon Bird, of the National Association for People Abused in Childhood, called on the BBC to remove the film or amend it to make viewers aware of Dunn’s warped views.

The BBC said: ‘This video – which doesn’t involve or discuss any children – was considered a significant programme on gay rights and has been online for many years.’ MAIL ON SUNDAY

The Scottish Minorities Group became Outright Scotland WikiOutright Scotland is no longer a working group… It became Equality Network websiteEquality Network, 30 Bernard Street, Edinburgh EH6 6PR
T ~ +44 (0) 131 467 6039 f +44 (0) 131 476 9006en@equality-network.org
Registered Scottish Charity: SC037852. Company limited by guarantee: SC220213.Outright Scotland is aLGBT rightsorganisation based inEdinburgh, Scotland. In the past, it has also been known as the Scottish Minorities Group and the Scottish Homosexual Rights Group. History| TodayCURRENT Organisations

This is a personal index toNational Archives of ScotlandFiles GD467, Records of Outright Scotland often known as the “Ian Dunn Archive” This is prepared by Ian Strang for personal research purposes and should not be quoted.Link to the NAS Catalogue entry. If this does not work go toNAS Searchand enter GD467 in RefNo field.The organisation known asOutright Scotland(OS) was founded in May 1969 as the Scottish Minorities Group, and between 1978 and 1992 was known as the Scottish Homosexual Rights Group. OS exists to uphold the rights of Scottish lesbian, gay and bisexual persons, and its archives include records of its work in the areas of law reform, welfare and social activities. Included are the records of the Scottish Homosexual Action Group (SHAG) (GD467/8/1-11). SHAG was an in dependant organisation, separate from the SHRG. Its records date from 1987 to 1989 and concern opposition to section 28 of the Local Government Bill 1988 and the organisation of the Lark in the Park, Edinburgh, 1989.The records were sorted by a member of the organisation, who I believe to be Cecil Sinclair who died in 2004, and deposited as a private collection in the care of the Scottish Records Office in July 1996. Obituary to Cecil Sinclair: Scotsman Newspaper. 29 October 2004. A page on Cecil’s unique contribution to the LGBT community is in preparation. If you have further information pleaseemail.

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